Some Local Hits Survive

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The Bird just keeps on dancing
Edmonton group the Emeralds recorded iconic song
By Fish Griwkowsky, edmontonjournal.com
April 27, 2012

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD2cIluVn-s

Thirty years ago, an Edmonton cover band turned a 1950s Swiss accordion piece into an anthropological mainstay.

For most of us in the New World, The Bird Dance first shook its haunches on east Whyte Avenue, recorded at Damon Studios by the polka-loving Emeralds, going double platinum.

“(Engineer) Gary McDonall — he’s gone now, but he recorded every single note,” says Emeralds founder and saxophone player Allan Broder. “He had all our gold and platinum albums lined up, as well as The Rodeo Song — ‘Thirty below and I don’t give a,’ you know,” he laughs.

The modern incarnation of the band plays Horizon Stage Sunday. They’ll play The Bird Dance, of course — how could they not?

Their vintage, 1982 K-Tel Bird Dance album jacket is a distinctly SCTV-era collage of tinted-spectacled office workers dancing awkwardly with people in bird costumes. Instructions for the moves are on the back, imported from Europe. Thanks to aggressive TV ads and a brushfire status at weddings for three decades, the bubbly keyboard flourish opening the Emeralds’s centrepiece is one of the most recognizable clumps of notes in Edmonton musical history.

The song is in Sam Raimi’s cult movie classic Crime Wave, and more recently was in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. It has thrived at Oktoberfests, family reunions and stadiums. The number of weddings it’s pecked into is incalculable.

Mundare-born Broder and Wallis Petruk of Vegreville are the two remaining Emeralds founders still on the boat, though others have been aboard for decades. Broder is cheerfully honest about the band, laughing when asked if this was ever a full-time job. “No! It never was and never will be!

“Nobody in the band treated it as a way of making a decent living — it’s a hobby. We never got tired of each other, or had to play six nights a week in a bar to a handful of people.”

Despite this, Broder remembers a year where the Emeralds played 121 gigs, mixing rock ‘n’ roll covers with polka standards and originals. “For a part-time band, that wasn’t bad. We just had as much work as we could handle.” They still play about 50 shows a year. “Lately we’ve only been practising every time we get onstage,” Broder notes, like a true touring musician. To make a living, he is a senior associate with ONPA Architects.

As far as predicting the longevity of The Bird Dance, he shrugs: “Never. Never in a million years.”

The five-piece still happily inhabits the novelty song in an act that’s evolved into a variety show in the last decade. Broder explains the early days, playing tenor sax in the Dynatones and Dominoes. “I was shopping around to see if someone needed a horn player. You’d meet four guys and say, ‘What songs do you know, and which keys do you play’?”

Gigging near Westlock, Broder hooked up with accordion player Al Oswald. “We did this job and kind of took a liking to each other and eventually formed the Emeralds.” That was 1970.

“Our first recording session at Damon, they had a tape recorder and a microphone in the centre of the room. We all stood around in a circle and you just prayed nobody made a mistake, because you had no editing or anything. We recorded the first four albums like that.” Oswald only recently retired from the band.

Broder first heard tape of their signature song — under the name The Chicken Dance — at a gig at the Dutch Canadian Club in Edmonton. “We learned it and were playing it for about six months and then I got a call from K-Tel International.” The record company asked them to cover a “corny song” — sure enough, it was the same number. The original song, Der Ententanz, actually means The Duck Dance, and was written by Werner Thomas of Davos, Switzerland. In its international expansion over the decades, it’s become a tribute to many winged creatures, including roosters, ducklings and angels. A Japanese version is Okashii Tori — The Crazy Bird. A 1943 concerto by English composer William Alwyn contains early elements of the song.

Regardless of its roots, Bird Dance was a huge success all over North America.

“My wife was in one of those costumes on the cover,” says Broder. The gesture seems to have been appreciated — the two have been married going on 47 years.

“You know what they say about a marriage like mine. We go out for dinner, candlelight and wine, twice a week. She goes on Tuesday, I go on Thursday.”

Like any cultural mainstay, The Bird Dance has detractors. Said to wedding DJs, the phrase “none of that Bird Dance stuff” implies a desire to break from tradition, ironically as common as, “we’re going to be different and not kiss when you clink your glasses.”

Motley Crue’s Vince Neil leading a Cincinnati Oktoberfest crowd through the dance was voted by VH1 the “least metal moment in history.” And Broder specifically recalls a former Edmonton Journal writer being repeatedly cruel to the band in print, then asking for an interview when an eastern newspaper took interest in the Emeralds. “I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ But we have since become good friends,” Broder chuckles.

Whether or not teenagers today play The Bird Dance at a house party misses a larger point — that this transplanted Swiss song contributes to our North American folk identity. When a YouTube troll dubs it the “white people dance,” there’s no point denying it. Yet it’s survived both disco and country line dancing. Whether we’re doing it on the moon down the road remains to be seen.

Nik Kozub co-owns a recording studio, The Audio Department, in the spot where Damon Studios used to be. He lets people know The Bird Dance was recorded here long ago. “Everyone I’ve told is very surprised. A lot of people don’t believe me when I tell them. I think it’s interesting — it’s a global hit.”

But Broder is still making history through persistence. “If I ever get on that stage and feel I don’t want to be there, it’s time I put a golden spike in the wall and hang up my saxophone.

“But certainly not today. People like you keep us going.”

fgriwkowsky@edmontonjournal.com

Read Fish’s blog Wild Life at edmontonjournal.com/blogs

Preview

The Emeralds Show and Dance Band

Where: Horizon Stage, 1001 Calahoo Rd., Spruce Grove

When: 2 p.m. Sunday, April 29

Tickets: $25 through the Horizon box office, horizonstage.com or 780-962-8995

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